In Civil Disobedience, American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau argues that individual citizens should resist governments that attempt to overrule or atrophy their consciences. Thoreau compares the government to a machine; when the machine produces injustice, Thoreau contends that it is the duty of every citizen to act as a "counter-friction to stop the machine." First published in 1849, Civil Disobedience primarily aimed its criticism at the institution of slavery and the American imperialism Thoreau saw in the Mexican-American War.